


the boat that would row you back

by adiduck (book_people)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dream Logic, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Post-Order 66, This is a story about Cody going into the Underworld to drag someone back out, i don't know what you want from me, temporary major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26115664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/book_people/pseuds/adiduck
Summary: “He vanished into the Cosmic Force,” Vader intones, and Cody will never understand why people raised as Jedi don’t just say ‘dead’.“Is there a reason,” Cody asks, voice shaking with grief over his General’s lightsaber and cloak for the very last time, eyes still burning and blurry with choked-off tears, “you needed to free me to tell me that?” Is there a reason Cody had needed to know at all? Why would Darth Vader--Anakin Skywalker--bother to track down General Kenobi’s former Commander, and make absolutely certain he’d feel the loss sharp and hot in his chest when he delivered the news. What purpose would it serve, now?“You misunderstand, Commander,” Vader says, and Cody blinks. “He vanished. Wholly. He purposely did not block, I struck him down, and by the time the cloak had fallen, there was no body remaining.”
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 267
Kudos: 764





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS ALL DEE'S FAULT. (Go see Dee's fics at [whimsicalimages](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicalimages/pseuds/whimsicalimages), they're all amazing)
> 
> This fic ate my life and personally threw all the other WIPs I'm working on out of the house, so I'm glad it's done and I can tackle the other... six WIPs again (ORZ). It was a fun challenge, and I hope it lives up to what I thought its potential was!
> 
> Fic is complete, so I'm going to be posting a chapter every other day.

The first thought that Cody has that is wholly his own since Utapau is nearly swallowed whole in the static of screaming pain.

The thought is this: _Am I dead?_

He is not. He is lying on the floor, gasping, near-shaking with pain and nausea, and the moment his hands are his own he rips off his bucket before he can be sick inside it. Instead he empties his stomach onto the durasteel plating of an out of the way command hub, spits, blinks blood and sweat out of his eyes, braces himself on the cold steel beneath him and gasps in huge lungfuls of air, off-tempo with the respirator he can hear regular as the tides of Tipoca City.

He’s alive.

He has his blaster out and is firing at Darth Vader before the room has finished spinning.

The bolt _doesn’t land_ \--freezes in the air before Vader’s mask, inches before hitting its mark dead between the helm’s eyes. Cody fires again anyway as his back slams into the cold steel wall of the hub to brace, as the dark red saber hisses to light and bats both bolts away like nothing--and _again_ , teeth gritted in a snarl as the blaster is ripped out of his hands by an unseen Force. Hand to his boot, and he’s gripping a vibroblade as that same force drags him forward, _rips_ him off the ground and tosses him through the air towards the plasma of the blade, and he thinks _this is a better death_ and--

He freezes in the air, dangling and unable to move, so close to the plasma he can feel it burning against his chest.

“Control yourself, Commander,” Vader says, low and even, “or I will rethink my priorities.”

Cody can’t get enough air into his lungs to breath properly, like this, let alone speak. He hangs there, crucified and furious, and says nothing. Darth Vader doesn’t even bother to gesture as he lets Cody fall like a puppet with cut strings, gives no sign of effort as Cody lands and strains against the invisible force to stand.

“ _Hut'tuun_ ,” Cody manages to gasp out, as the vibroblade is also ripped from his hand by invisible fingers.

“You are trying my patience,” Darth Vader intones. “You will subside, or I will eliminate you as easily as I destroyed your control chip. Either way,” he says, as Cody tries to choke an answer out of his paralyzed throat, “you will be seeing my former Master again.”

Cody freezes.

With a casual gesture, two objects fly through the air and land at Cody’s feet--a carefully folded brown cloak, and a lightsaber Cody would know deaf and blind.

Cody feels himself shatter like transparisteel before a shockwave--blown out and burning, helpless against the blast.

* * *

High General Obi-Wan Kenobi was once the most important person in Cody’s world.

On Utapau, nineteen years ago, someone had reached into Cody’s head and twisted him to something unrecognizable, nothing but the blaster in Cody’s hands, and then turned him on General Kenobi and fired.

Cody had spent the last nineteen years believing, insofar as he had been allowed to believe anything, that General Kenobi was dead. That it was Cody’s fault.

Sitting in that out of the way command hub, Cody learns that he had failed, that his General had lived.

And that as of half a day ago, he had lost him anyway.

* * *

“He vanished into the Cosmic Force,” Vader intones, and Cody will never understand why people raised as Jedi don’t just say ‘dead’.

“Is there a reason,” Cody asks, voice shaking with grief over his General’s lightsaber and cloak for the very last time, eyes still burning and blurry with choked-off tears, “you needed to free me to tell me that?” Is there a reason Cody had needed to know _at all_ ? Why would Darth Vader-- _Anakin Skywalker_ \--bother to track down General Kenobi’s former Commander, and make _absolutely certain_ he’d feel the loss sharp and hot in his chest when he delivered the news. What purpose would it serve, now?

“You misunderstand, Commander,” Vader says, and Cody blinks. “He _vanished_. Wholly. He purposely did not block, I struck him down, and by the time the cloak had fallen, _there was no body remaining_.”

* * *

Vader is furious. In his mind, Obi-Wan Kenobi is, apparently, _his_ , and to allow himself to be struck down in battle in this way is unacceptable.

His theory is this: if there is no body, there is hope.

The absolute _irony_ is this: as a Sith, Vader cannot follow his former master into the Cosmic Force and remain wholly himself.

General Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber still feels right in Cody’s hands, even now--weighted, as they both are, by nineteen years of tired, endless sadness and grief and pain. It still warms in his hand, comforting the way Obi-Wan had been comforting, wrapped in a steady light that tasted to Cody like the warm, green teas Obi-Wan would brew in his quarters and press into Cody’s hands just to hold, and the crisp, clear salt of Kamino after a storm. It tugs, aching and slow, at the center of him, as it always has--a balance to his weight he’d hardly been conscious of missing until he had it again.

“You will help me retrieve him from the Cosmic Force,” Vader says, not so much an order as a statement of fact.

The worst part, the part that makes Cody want to spit and howl and blast the only real _traitor_ to wield a lightsaber in the last nineteen years, is that he is absolutely right.

* * *

Unfortunately, if Cody had expected nineteen years to result in a plan from this individual more thought out than ‘barrel in and deal with whatever you find when you get there’, he is _sorely_ disappointed.

“You will use Kenobi’s connection to his ‘saber to enter the cosmic force,” Vader says, arms crossed where he stands in the door, an enormous black wall between what is happening in this hub and the rest of the battle station.

“Before today, I assumed ‘cosmic force’ was a euphemism, not a place,” Cody says. “I will need more information on how to do that.”

Vader is ominously silent, which if Cody remembers correctly, is a sure sign he has no kriffing idea what to do either. Cody had never known Anakin Skywalker to keep silent when he could lord superior intel over another person. Clearly, he’s expecting Cody to just figure it out.

He sighs, as quietly as he can, and tries to arrange himself on the cold metal floor in a way that doesn’t make his right hip ache, turning to look at the lightsaber in his hand. It warms, slightly, as though preening a bit under the scrutiny, and it makes Cody smile in spite of himself. This weapon has always reminded him of his General, and he doesn’t think it was just due to association.

He takes a slow, deep breath, and closes his eyes, reaches deep inside himself for that corner of him that used to glow, careful and warm, nineteen years ago.

And there it is, under his metaphorical fingers, a pulse of a sparking wire in a too-old, run down droid. It evens as he finds it like a circuit connecting, tasting of ozone over Kamino’s sea in the cool, crisp morning after a storm. It feels like the end of a wait, and Cody nearly flinches at the depth of grief that washes over him like a tide, has to hold his breath once more as it pulls him out again, caught in an undertow. It calls, and in his hand, the General’s _jetiikad_ answers, as it has, oh, more times than Cody cares to count. Cody turns his head, listening to the hum of the line, and reaches out to try to follow where it leads.

“Excellent, Commander,” comes Vader’s voice, from far away, and it’s almost enough to make Cody flinch for real, lose the thread of his concentration, but not _quite_ . “I see Obi-Wan taught you the basics of this, after all.” _A warm hand on his shoulder, the scent of tea and sea salt, a voice that Cody would follow anywhere murmuring ‘good, Cody, focus on me, now; you are in your body, the galaxy spins on. Breathe in, and hold--’_ “The kyber crystal is calling to you,” Vader tells him, and under the vocoder is a voice he’d once called ally, quiet in the rhythm of Cody’s breath. “Grasp it with your senses, allow it to bind you.” Cody breathes out, and wraps the line of warmth around his completed circuit with a breath, and another, the slowly shortening string reeling him ever into the song of something too far to hear.

The crystal in the ‘saber, when it catches him, feels like a raft in a sea, and tastes like green tea and the light of General Kenobi’s kind, sad eyes.

He pauses where he is for a moment to breathe, to take a mental look at the current situation. The crystal pulses in his mind’s eye in slow, steady swells and lulls, the line connecting it to Cody firmly wrapped around his own light. In front of him there is a well of darkness, sucking, shining bright at the event horizon that must be Vader; he turns away. He can’t get caught in that gravity well, knows instinctively that it will mean the end of this attempt. Instead, he reaches out along the crystal-raft, feeling out the edges and letting the light sink deep into his bones. _Where is he,_ he asks it. _How do I find him?_

There’s no answer, of course, just another swell of deep, bone-wrenching sadness, heavy enough to pull Cody down to drown. He breathes through that, asks again. _Where is he? Please._

At the edge of the raft, he finds another cord, thicker than Cody’s own; soldered to the crystal with steel and twisted out like a metal cable. He hauls it up, and sees it reaching out into the distance, too far out for him to see where it connects, too low in the water to see its end. He knows, somehow, instinctively, that it stretches to the horizon in this not-quite-sea he has made for himself in his mind, and through.

He takes a deep breath, grips with both hands, and starts hauling himself forward, cord coiling like a rope at his feet. One more breath, one more pull. Again, and again, and then twice within the same breath, and then three times--

“Commander,” Vader’s voice cuts in, suddenly. “Commander, your heartbeat is slowing.”

 _Good_ , Cody thinks, and hauls himself along, one more time, and then one more--

“ _Cody_ ,” Vader snaps, and the black hole looms behind him, alarm ripping through the air and making the waves on Cody’s raft choppy. “Commander, you had best have an explanation--”

“I’m going to get him,” Cody says, or thinks he does, and the air around him is _thick_ as he pulls himself forward again, like moving through soup, like the air is clawing him back.

“You are no use to me _dead_ ,” Vader booms, and Cody smiles with his real mouth as he feels cold hands gripping his shoulders. He opens his eyes.

“I’m getting him back,” he says again, and closes his eyes in both frames, grips the cord tight one final time, feet locked on the raft and air screaming with a coming storm, and _heaves_.

Something tears, there’s a shout like a warning or an exclamation or a _cry_ , and then--

\--Nothing.

* * *

When Cody comes to, he is lying face down on a road, entire body aching like he’d been thrown through the air and landed hard, and the ‘saber is a ‘saber again, warm and pulsing in his hand. Around him is silence more complete than he’s ever heard outside of vacuum--the very air sucked out of the galaxy, though he can feel each painful breath he forces in against bruised ribs. He groans, here on this empty path where nobody can hear him, and tightens his grip on the weapon, levering himself laboriously to his feet, looking around at the deep, dark forest of silent trees that absolutely were not on the Death Star last he looked, nor in the seascape he’d made of his mind, searching for a way through--

\--And his eyes catch on the 212th gold paint on his chestplate. He stares, blankly, and lets his gaze fall to the ground before him, where his old Phase II bucket lies in the dirt, as though knocked off his head on impact.

“What,” he says, conversationally, to nobody, “the kark?”


	2. Chapter 2

The path spreads out endlessly through the silent trees in both directions, winding out of sight around a bend no matter which way he looks. Moss grows all the way around the huge trunks, giving little idea what direction would be this planet’s north, if indeed this is a planet.

(It’s not; he knows it isn’t, somehow, deep in his bones where primal fear lives. He is still on the Death Star; he is nowhere he has ever been before. He has no idea what this place is.)

He puts his bucket on and activates the HUD, takes a few bracing breaths that he can hear bouncing off the plastoid, familiar. Safe. A brief scan shows no life signs in the trees moving silently in a dead air, as though there’s a breeze he can’t feel.

He looks down at the lightsaber in his hand. It warms, again, a little like encouragement. _Which way?_ he thinks, and shuts his eyes. _Which way to find him?_

It takes less time, this time, to sink into the closed circuit somewhere deep in the back of his mind, and about the same amount to find the line that connects him to the ‘saber’s heart. The raft sits motionless on still water in his mind’s eye, the sky a dark, uniform gray that blocks the light. He carefully, carefully, does not let himself react, instead reaching into the sea again to pull up the metal cord, give it a tug out of the water to see where it leads. He turns to face it, opens his eyes to find himself looking down the path in the direction he’d been facing away from, when he woke.

“...Right,” he says, and clips his General’s lightsaber to his belt. The weight against his leg feels like a balance he’d been missing. He clenches his empty fists, purposely releases them, and begins to walk.

And he keeps walking, for a long time. The trees wind around and up and through the path, bisecting it in places, bending over like arches that force Cody to bow his head to continue on. The HUD picks up nothing, records Cody’s breaths and his vitals but not the time spent moving, and so Cody breathes, and loses himself to the rhythm, to the rushing of blood in his ears, and the steady beats of boots against packed earth--the only sound made in an echoing expanse of silence. His ribs ache, and so do his hips, his left leg where he broke it and it never quite healed right, his head--

Cody is 33--a clone’s 33. It wasn’t something that bothered him, before Vader broke his chip.

The path stretches on, and Cody keeps walking.

He doesn’t hear it, but between one step and the next there is a break in the trees, and a deep, gray expanse of water stretching out in front of Cody--so wide, he cannot see the other bank. A sea, he thinks, but when he reaches the edge his HUD tells him the water’s fresh, and suddenly he can smell the silt, the growing grasses along the bank, the clear crispness of the current moving on. A river, then--a wide river.

He frowns, looks down at the _jettikad_ on his belt. “Am I supposed to swim across?” he asks it.

“I wouldn’t,” says a voice that is more familiar to Cody than almost any sound he knows.

He whips around, heart in his throat at the sudden words in the otherwise complete silence, hand spasming as he both tries to reach for a blaster that isn’t there and tries to stop the motion. In front of him is now a boat, held still in the water by a long, flat oar. The man inside, though, is not one of Cody’s brothers, with his largely unpainted _beskar'gam_ and thin blue outline.

Jango Fett tilts his head at Cody, clearly eyeing him top to bottom, leaning against the pole casually. The set of his shoulders is not impressed.

“No?” Cody asks, as casually as he can, and his fingers _itch_ for a blaster.

Fett snorts. “You wouldn’t make it across,” he says, dismissive. “Not _this_ river. There’s only one way to the other side.” He reaches up with a hand, and takes his bucket off casually. His face--which, Cody realizes with a lurch, is now younger than Cody’s own--looks as unimpressed as the cut of his shoulders. “But I don’t work for free.”

Cody’s jaw tightens hard enough for his temples to throb. “You never did,” he agrees, softly, and reaches up to take his own bucket off, tuck it under his arm. He meets Jango’s eyes, and wonders why he believes him, even now. “What’s your price?”

Jango snorts and looks away, dismissive, as he hooks his bucket to his belt. “A coin under the tongue is traditional,” he drawls, “but if you’re asking, I doubt you’re that prepared.” Cody feels himself stiffen all at once, head to toe. That tone is a familiar one, makes him _ache_ to--he doesn’t know. _Get up, cadet. K’atini. Again. Again._

“Not every day someone drags themself bodily into the Cosmic Force,” he says, voice still as level as he can make it.

“Wrong,” Jango says, and the smirk on his face sinks into Cody’s bones like a bruise. “Well then, what do you have to offer, for passage across?”

Nothing.

Cody stares at Jango for a moment, and does not let himself tense. “What I’m wearing,” he responds, flatly. Jango grins, wide and mean.

“You want to hand me that _jetiikad_ , then?” And Cody stiffens, hand falling to Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber on instinct, falling back into a ready stance. Jango laughs. “Didn’t think so,” he says, and shifts a bit, eyes too knowing for a phantom out of Cody’s childhood. Or maybe exactly as knowing as they should be, for that. “Think then. What do you have that you can give, to take you one step further?”

Cody looks down at himself, wracking his mind, furious and impotent on the shore of this river that may not really exist. The world around them is silent, only broken by Cody’s breaths in his own ears.

His eyes fall on his right handplate almost without thought, and suddenly, he knows what the price for this is.

The hook for General Kenobi’s lightsaber is on Cody’s right hip, on this armor. Always has been--easy to grab, heavy and familiar. He’d replaced pieces of this armor over the time he’d had it, one bit of plastoid at a time, but the lightsaber found its way to his right hand every time. He’d replaced his right handguard only once.

_General Kenobi had laughed, long and hard, when Cody had come to him, the blank white armor piece in hand, the 212th gold paint in the other. ‘Let me guess,’ he’d said. ‘If you’re to be holding my lightsaber, I’d best have a hand in the armor piece most likely to be in contact with it?’ Cody had smirked at him, raised a pointed eyebrow, and the General had gone off again, loud and overtired. ‘Right, right. Let’s see if I can come up with something interesting.’_

Cody hadn’t had this armor set, this paint, for nearly two decades. He had given it up himself without a thought, when the new stormtrooper armor was distributed. It had probably been destroyed along with his brothers’, recycled into the war machine of the Empire Cody could not help but serve.

He’d given it up, in a way, the day he’d given up his General. A fitting trade, then, to get him back.

“I can give you my armor,” he says, and does not let his voice shake.

Jango is silent for a moment, stretching into eternity.

“Acceptable,” he says, and stands up, oar planted in the river, arms crossed. “Hand it over, and then get on.”

* * *

The trip across the river is long, and silent. Cody, barefoot and standing at the fore of the ferry, does not look behind him to the being that looks like Jango Fett, or to the pile of armor at that being’s feet.

The lightsaber pulses in his hands again, warm and soothing, and he lets his fingers curl around it, dips into his circuit and then through and onto the crystal raft, and does not let himself laugh at the bitter irony of being surrounded by water in both realities.

‘ _Where are you?’_ he asks, in that dead sea, and pulls the cord up connecting the raft to his General. It is still too far, too heavy, to see, even as it coils on its own into a ring at his feet as he advances. ‘ _How much further?’_

The silence is deafening, and the horizon gets no closer.

He comes back to himself as the ferry stops, and Jango Fett says, “Get out.”

Cody sighs, and steps off the boat and onto land, feeling the silt of the riverbank squelch between his toes. He’s facing the right way, at least, he thinks, wry even in his own mind, and takes another step, determined not to look back--

\--It’s only reflexes honed his entire life that save him from tripping over the pile of familiar, stark white armor suddenly in his path. The derisive snort behind him makes him nearly snarl.

“A gift, it looks like,” Fett drawls. “That’s nice of someone.” Cody looks, and looks, fingers tight around the hilt of the lightsaber, and can’t speak.

He is defenseless in a strange, dead world right now, but he is not stupid. The air itself is thick with symbolism; the Force _osik_ his General lived and breathed. This, he thinks, wildly, is a test. A decision he must make. He doesn’t know which is the right choice.

He never wants to wear stormtrooper armor again.

“Didn’t take you for an idiot,” Fett says behind him, conversationally. Cody grits his teeth.

Jango’s right. It has never mattered, really, what Cody _wants_. Not in this.

He steps forward, reaches for the chest and backplate, and slides it on, settling it onto his shoulders. It fits perfectly. He knew it would.

Behind him, Jango hums. Cody feels his eyes on him as he watches Cody suit up.

Shoulder pauldron, vambraces, hand-guards. Boots--and he is, at least, glad he won’t be walking barefoot to whatever is next. Belt, hook back on his hip with the General’s lightsaber attached, greaves--

“So, _did_ you bring glory?”

Cody very, very carefully doesn’t react, as he straps on the last greave and stands up, bucket in his hands.

“Now I know you’re not really Jango Fett,” he says, levelly. “There is no way the real Jango would remember me, or recognize me if he did.”

“I named you,” Jango points out.

“You didn’t,” Cody says, and turns to look at the man who was never his parent. “I named myself. You just gave me the idea.” Jango smirks again, leaning on his oar.

“So, did you?”

Cody stares at him, and lifts the bucket up, pulling it down until he hears the seal. “Depends on who you ask.”

“It always does,” Jango Fett says, and pulls his own bucket on, turns away to begin the trip back across the river.

Cody, fists clenched, watches him go, and then faces outward, away from the water, and activates the HUD.

“Wow,” he says, again, to absolutely nobody. “Somehow, I’d forgotten how terrible these HUDs are, compared to the older models.” He sighs, and sits down, turns his head this way and that to get used to the lack of peripheral vision. “You’d think the Empire would shell out a bit more,” he continues wryly. “Hard to strike fear into the hearts of the common folk if we can’t aim for shit. If I’m still in that command hub, I really hope I’m speaking out loud right now. I’d like to lodge a formal complaint.”

There is no answer. The world is silent, though the trees seem less dense here, still stretching out in front of him, the path perhaps a little bit more cared for; lined, now, with cobblestone. He might be headed somewhere after all.

“Are you really going to be at the end of this road, General?” he asks, and doesn’t expect an answer. “What am I supposed to do when I find you?”

He sits on the path for another small eternity, breathes and feels the breaths enter his lungs, the familiar press of plastoid heavy against his form.

Then he stands, and walks on.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're all TOO NICE and it's been 36 hours, which is close enough to two days. Please accept this chapter a full 12 hours early, with my love.

There is a rhythm, to marching on past the point of endurance; when your muscles burn and every step aches sharp in joints strained too far for too long. It centers, after awhile; sinks into a blank sort of silent screaming, and adrift in it, you can march for miles.

Cody has reached that point, now, and passed it by, knows that he is moving at this stage solely because he hasn’t stopped--another cog in another machine of war, in the silent stretch of this slowly thinning forest. He turned the HUD off a while ago, tired of the readings being dead and dead and dead, and still the road reaches out before him in an endless arm towards a never-changing horizon. It’s cobbled now, at least, which implies he is walking towards something. He genuinely has no idea what he will find at the end.

 _General Kenobi_ , he reminds himself, and reaches up to run gauntleted hands along the top of the ‘saber at his belt. _Obi-Wan Kenobi is at the end of this._ He breathes, fills lungs that burn, and continues on.

He passes a low, flat stone, and then a bench, and then a hollow of a tree, blanketed in dry leaves, sending a sudden scent of warm earth and growing things--an excellent place to stop, if he wanted to. These are traps. He cannot imagine they are anything else. He ignores them, puts one more foot in front of the other, and again.

He doesn’t know, exactly, when he is joined on the road. One moment he is alone, and the next there are many--silent, staring shades of every age and gender and species, passing Cody on their way as though he is just another tree. They don’t speak, or waver; not a one of them seems tired, although some of them sit as the options become more frequent; bow their heads and weep, or lay back and shut their eyes to sleep. They do not move again.

Cody reaches for the ‘saber on his belt, takes it off to hold firmly in his hand. He does his best not to touch the beings passing him, heart in his throat as he marches forward in their number. _Can they hear me?_ he wonders. _Am I just another of them, now?_

_How much further?_

In front of him, there is a low, ominous growl, ripped eerily from a human-sounding throat. Cody stiffens, crests the next rise--

\--And freezes at the top.

“Hell,” he says, out loud, as he takes in the creature barring the way.

Looking at just the fore- and hind legs, it might have just been a lothwolf, or some other very large mammal. Out of its torso, though, are three separate chests, growing out as though melded together--each in the armor of a stormtrooper, bucket missing to expose the face of three clones--unscarred, unmarked, eyes sharp and empty as they survey their domain; three blaster rifles held with perfect military position in front of them. Guarding. The creature sits on its haunches, lothwolf forelegs stretching out in front of it, and the shades walk around it, staring straight ahead, without stopping. Occasionally, one of the heads catches sight of a shade, and it snarls--a warning.

Cody meets the eyes of the clone in the middle, staring straight at him with too-blank, too-knowing eyes, and freezes where he stands.

“This facility is in lockdown,” the clone says, voice ( _a clone voice; Cody’s voice_ ) carrying clear across the expanse to Cody. “You are not authorized to enter.”

They don’t look like anyone he knows; don’t curl their voices in any particularly unique way around words like some brothers do. They’re somewhere between 14 and 20, when the clones began to be retired and decommissioned in droves. Nothing of a person to them, no different from the brothers on either side. That’s probably the point, Cody thinks, grimly. These are nobody Cody knows. They are meat droids, mouthpieces of the Empire, and fists, if necessary.

Cody does not belong here; he is not _authorized_ to be in this place. This clone knows it.

Cody is going to have to get past them.

He forces his cooling body to move forward again--one step, and another--catalogues the fact that the middle head does not respond to this, but does not look away either. He is being observed for threat level then; fine. The animal is big, but it’s not in a position that will allow it to move its entire bulk quickly; it will mostly rely on the three clones and blasters to protect what it guards. The trick, then, is to get behind the creature, and then move as fast as he can out of sight, so it won’t be worth the hassle of following when weighed against the risk of preventing any other breaches of security.

Whoever the creature reports to will know Cody is there, but after Jango, it probably already does.

Cody fills his lungs with too-still air, holds the breath for a count of seven, and then lets it out, slowly. He continues to walk forward, forcing himself to stay loose, casual. He knows standard guard protocol; having warned the potential insurgent once, the clone will not speak again until Cody’s about fifty paces out--

“Sir,” the clone to the right says, not looking at Cody, even as the middle clone continues to stare him down. “You are unauthorized to enter this area. Please vacate the premises.” Cody smiles, grim, and continues to walk forward, clipping the lightsaber back to his belt to free his hands. Twenty-five paces, twenty--

“Sir, this is your final warning,” says the clone on the left. “Turn around, or we will be forced to take proactive measures to protect our post.”

Cody keeps walking, looking the middle clone directly in the eye through his visor, takes five more steps, and five more--

The center clone raises his blaster. Cody digs in his front foot, and takes off in a sprint.

He dodges to the left just enough that the blaster shot grazes a pauldron, stays low and _leaps_ at the center clone as they are re-aiming, slams his body into the brother as hard as he can and bats the blaster away with a shoulder. He _shoves_ off past him as the clone shouts out in pain, and lands on the creature’s back with a grunt, tucks and rolls down the side and dashes out and past, skirting the edge of the right back leg--

\--The creature howls, loud and screaming, an echo of human pain and fear in voices Cody knows down to the core of him. Cody’s foot lands wrong as the entire back of the beast shifts, attempting to roll towards him, and he dodges away and--

\--the tail lashes out like a whip, and catches him in the torso. It feels like an exploding shell, and sounds like a charge going off, and then Cody is _flying_ \--

\--He slams into a tree hard, moving too fast to brace, head ricocheting off the trunk with a _thunk_ he feels in his back teeth, and for just a moment, his vision flashes bright, and then goes black.

* * *

He comes to all at once, gasping, immediately tries to roll to his feet as he scans the area for a threat--

“Woah there!” says a voice to his left, and he rounds on it, feet under him and ready to strike, to find--

\--Bail Organa, crouched next to him in the leaves, old and gray as the last time Cody noted him in a holo recording, hands raised in the universal sign for peace. Cody stares.

“Didn’t mean to startle you, Commander,” Organa says, slow and careful. “It’s been a long time. I was just--ah, passing through, and thought you looked like you might need some help.”

“Senator Organa,” Cody says, finally, and lets himself sit back down slowly, lets the ready tension go from his shoulders a bit, even as he watches the man carefully. “It _has_ been a long time. Can’t say I expected to see you here, sir.”

“...Yes,” Cody’s General’s old friend agrees, mouth twisting wry as he relaxes in turn. “It was, I suspect, a surprise for many. I was… well. Home.”

“Home?” Cody asks?

“On Alderaan,” Senator Organa says, quietly, and Cody--

“Oh,” he says, and shuts his eyes.

He had not been on the bridge, of course, when Alderaan was destroyed. He was still in a command post--too valuable, he supposes, as a strategic mind, even with the chip--but a lot of the _trappings_ of command were stripped from his position early. It was a rare thing for him to be called in with the rest of command; an emergency, or to specifically deal with commanding the troops.

It had made it strange, in hindsight, that he’d known exactly when Alderaan had been destroyed. Had been sitting doing flimsywork one moment, and slumped down in his chair the next, tears he couldn’t explain running down his face. He’d been--mildly surprised, he supposes; had wiped the wet off his face and returned to his work. When he’d heard later about the successful test of the Death Star, he had not been at all surprised.

It makes sense, he thinks, with slow resigned horror, that Bail Organa is here in this place after all. The surprising thing is that he stopped for an old clone, when Cody himself is responsible for the man losing so much.

“Are all of them Alderaanian?” he asks, now, forcing his eyes back open to watch the silent walkers as they made their way down the road.

“...Most of them,” Senator Organa admits, and he sounds... sad. Of course he does. “I admit, I… feel somewhat unworthy, walking among them. It was the target on my back that led us all here, so in a way, it’s my fault.”

Cody had never really put the pieces together--not his area, in the Imperial machine--but in hindsight, the fact that Bail Organa had rebelled was obvious. Cody remembers him as a good man--one who worked within the system, but cared, and listened when other voices spoke. He had not deserved this end. “No more your fault than mine,” Cody says, because it is true. “I was on the battle station when it happened.”

Senator Organa says nothing, and Cody shuts his eyes again, suddenly exhausted, full of a bone-deep guilt that he had not known what he was seeing, had done nothing to even try to stop this tragedy from taking place. ( _He had been chipped; he had been helpless, unable to even recognize the need. The knowledge doesn’t help_.)

“I left a daughter,” the Senator says, musing and exhausted sounding, too. “She was off planet on my orders.” He laughs. “Small mercies, I suppose. She’ll have a long litany to speak now, if the Empire doesn’t manage to execute her.”

Cody smiles, and takes that as another blow--Leia Organa was in the custody of the Empire, last Cody checked, on the same battlestation as Cody. There had been an escape attempt, but Cody isn’t sure if it had been successful--

\--”Litany, sir?” he asks, as his mind goes still, careful, as the lightsaber warms against his leg.

“It will be… a lot of names,” the Senator muses, voice with that same sad tone laced underneath.

“I didn’t realize Alderaan spoke litanies for the dead,” Cody says, and as the Senator looks up at him, surprised, the lightsaber _burns_.

It’s enough to make him jerk his thigh away from it, a shock of pain to the senses to cut through the growing fog, the growing dread and grief. The air feels strange, thick, like cotton wool. He grits his teeth, and starts to get back to his feet. “I should get moving,” he says, carefully.

The senator turns to look at him, surprise writ large on his face. “Commander--” he starts, and then closes his mouth, twists it into a concerned frown. “Are you sure? You look tired. Surely a rest--”

A rest. Like the benches. Cody would laugh, if he didn’t feel like a current was dragging him down, whispering _rest, rest, close your eyes, just for a moment--_ “No,” he says, and turns away, resolutely. “Thank you for stopping, Senator.” He takes a step, forces it up and back down in front of him, drags it through the underbrush--

\--the clinging underbrush, reaching out and around his ankles, clinging to the soles of his feet, and behind him the trees loom large, roots sinuous like snakes as they raise slowly, slowly, out of the ground, reaching--

“Cody?” comes a voice, and it sounds like a clone, and somehow Cody _knows_ it’s Rex-- ( _Rex, here; Cody had never looked for his name, hadn’t even thought to check--_ ) “Cody, is that--are you _alright, vod_?”

“Stop using my loved ones’ voices,” Cody grits out, and drags himself forward another step, and another, and the ground is like moving through soup, now, deep and sucking, midway up his calves.

“Commander!” That’s Barber now--the CMO of Obi-Wan Kenobi's flagship. “Sir, I saw you hit your head--”

Cody snarls, and rips his arm out of the grasp of a bowing branch. There are five more steps to the road--he can see the cobblestones now. Four steps, three, two--

“Cody?” calls Obi-Wan Kenobi’s voice, soft and sad and full of surprise, and maybe wonder--

Cody bends his knees, grits his teeth, and _lunges_ for the road, ripping his legs out of the knee-deep mud as he jumps.

He hits the cobblestones and rolls, curls to get his feet under him in a crouch right in the center, as the silence closes back in. He stills for a moment, panting, but whatever had found him under the trees was gone--lost in the silence of the trees still swaying in a non-existent wind. He lets out a breath on a slightly hysterical laugh, and lets himself fall forward to press his head to the stone.

The shades walk around him, silent, still staring straight ahead.

“Kriff,” Cody says, breathing slow and deep. “Kriff.” He closes his eyes. “Stay on the path. Message received.”

He doesn’t know how long he lays there, letting the adrenaline pass, but eventually he shoves himself up with a groan, taking stock. The armor is… cracked in multiple places, grotty with mud and ooze, many of the clasps bent from grasping roots taking hold and twisting to hold him down. His HUD is nothing but static in his bucket, and upon trying it he discovers he can’t turn it off. He grimaces, strips it off piece by broken piece and stacks it in a neat pile--leaves himself his boots and his belt, lightsaber firmly in place on its hook. Then he sighs, takes a very deep breath one more time, and stands. “Not much further,” he tells himself firmly, and pretends he has any idea whether it’s a lie.


	4. Chapter 4

The road is endless.

Cody walks, and walks, and walks. He leaves the trees behind, and then the cobblestone road for paved, manicured streets. Buildings rise, thicken, and then fall away, and the shades slowly lessen until there are only a handful, only three, only one. Cody notes, after a time, that he is once again alone, and grits his teeth against the weight of the empty, echoing silence. Grasses replace the buildings, high and golden. The air is thick with humidity, and hot, and Cody walks, and walks, and _walks_ , and wonders if there is anything to find.

He doesn’t make the conscious decision to stop. One moment, he is moving, and the next he is not, head bowed and eyes closed, sweat dripping down his face and neck, hair and collar damp with it, even as his blacks wick it from his skin where they touch him.

“I must be doing something wrong,” he reasons. “It’s been too long.” He sighs, and unclips the lightsaber, holds it in his hands and stares at it for a minute. “We never did get to the lessons on the mystical world of the dead, or wherever this place is,” he muses, as the lightsaber pulses in his hand--warm, like it’s trying to offer comfort. “I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do, General. Do I just walk until I collapse?”

The ‘saber pulses again, insistent, and Cody sighs. “Alright, alright, I’ll check,” he tells it, since it can’t exactly hurt. He closes his eyes.

Finding the circuit is easy now, and following the line out to the raft almost as quick. If nothing else, he’s learned how to do _this_ part, all on his own. He looks out at his silent, dead sea, and then sits down on the raft, legs dangling over the edge, and reaches for the tether he’s been assuming all this time leads to Obi-Wan Kenobi. He hums, and takes the tether in hand, letting the twisted cords press into his palms, heavy and wet.

“How do I get from here to where this ends, if walking isn’t working?” he asks, to nobody in particular. There’s no answer, obviously, but it feels good to speak the problem aloud. A tug on the cord doesn’t yield any results, and he scowls down at the dead water, the raft tilting just a little at his movement. Sighing, he lays the cord over his knees, and takes a moment to look out at the horizon, the deep, gray skies of world where he was grown superimposed on his conscious mind. There’s no infuriatingly helpful Sith Lord to guide him in anything approaching proper meditation this time, and no invisible skin between dreams to press through. He’s on his own--

\--He frowns.

This sea he was in, in his mind or heart or soul, it wasn’t _real_ . It was something that was his, bits and pieces of a place he had created from memory and instinct. But it was _here_ that he’d found his way into the strange not-a-world he’d been walking through; not the world where Vader sat in a command hub and watched him stumble his way into an answer. Here.

He looks down at the cord across his knees again, and picks it back up, and in this mindscape too, he shuts his eyes. 

Something in him has decided this cord is metal, has taken the time to form it that way, in his senses, let him feel it in his not-really-hands. That same something has made his sense of the bright, sparking power deep down and undefinable a circuit, running electricity through him in a way that isn’t physical but is always unquestionably there.

Metal and a closed circuit. There’s one thing he hasn’t tried.

He reaches inside him for the current that lives in his soul, thrumming to the pulses of the lightsaber and to his breaths and to his heart, takes hold of it in a mental grip, draws out a single line. He’d done this before, taking hold and throwing himself through to this place, bright and uncontrolled. Now, he is more careful, feeds the current into the bond in his hands, slow and controlled, and once bound, he _reaches_.

There’s a sound like a lightning strike, and a whir like a retracting cord, and then a _lurch_ , and Cody opens his eyes again in the mindscape sea with a shout as the raft _shoots_ forward, water spraying out and dousing him in cold salty surf, nearly throwing him off the raft as he rides the momentum forward fast fast _fast_ \--

\--The sudden jolt would have sent him head-first into the sea, if he hadn’t been holding on so hard.

He opens his eyes in the world, and it has changed.

He is standing before a circular clearing, the road coming to an abrupt end, the plains spread out behind him. Looking back, he can still see the buildings he’d passed by, in that silent city where the shades had fallen away. He is not somewhere else, then; only the world laid out before him has changed.

The clearing is obviously manicured--ringed with small, blue stones, identical in size, and covered in a fine, even layer of gravel. In the center of the clearing is a crystal--tall and wide and translucent, jagged edges reaching towards a cloudless blue sky, and glowing blue in time with the pulsing of the lightsaber in his hand. It looks deliberate, like a statue, or a memorial planted in a place easy to visit.

It’s the blue of Obi-Wan’s lightsaber.

He cannot see what’s beyond it.

 _Don’t step off the path_ , he thinks, wry, but what does he do if there’s no more path to follow?

It’s a trap. Of course it’s a trap.

Cody steps into it anyway.

He holds his breath, still and ready, as his boot crunches down onto the ground cover of the clearing--

\--Nothing. He smiles, centered in the way only an op makes him, and moves forward.

* * *

The crystal in the clearing proves to be deceptively large, as Cody walks around it, goes back and back and back, the eerie blue sending shadows skittering over the circle and playing with the shadows of the ring and the gravel and Cody himself. He skirts the edge, carefully not touching it, and doesn’t let himself think about the sparks of light he can see in the depths of the puddled shade. He rounds the other side, eventually, steps crunching in the crushed rock pieces beneath his heels, and turns to see what stretches out on the other side.

There’s a ridge, he notices first, and a sheer drop. Beyond that is a desert, spanning out to the horizon in a sea of sand, sunlight shining gold so bright Cody has to look away, blinking spots from his eyes.

Facing out towards the desert, seated with his legs crossed in empty air, hair and tunic flowing in a breeze that doesn’t exist, is Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He is older--of course he is. His hair and beard are both white, and he has wrinkles on his face, around his eyes and mouth. His eyes themselves are closed, and he looks--peaceful. Still. He doesn’t turn when Cody spots him, foot hovering over the gravel at his feet, frozen.

Cody swallows, and puts his foot down. “General,” he calls.

His voice does not make it past his throat, utterly silent, like the world. It takes Cody another second to realize he can no longer hear his own breaths. In his hand, the lightsaber screams to life, the only noise in a vast echoing silence, and drags itself up into a block in his hand just as another bright blue saber _slams_ down into it, and the figure holding it throws itself into him, howling only in Cody’s mind.

Cody does not know how to use a lightsaber, but he _does_ know how to use a blade. He retreats, blocks strike after strike, puts himself, instinctively, between this dark thing and General Kenobi, who doesn’t stir, doesn’t move--frozen in his meditation.

The creature is nothing Cody has ever seen before, he knows, in that he cannot see it at all. His eyes glance off it as though unable to look at it directly. It is relentless.

 _You do not belong here_ , booms in Cody’s mind, as he blocks another strike, locks the sabers to give himself a chance to catch his breath. _You come with a weapon that is not your own, to steal a soul that is here by right. Leave the weapon, and go._

No, Cody says, into the silence, voice swallowed as though by vacuum. This weapon was entrusted to me. It’s mine to protect.

He shoves to break the lock, and manages two, three strikes of his own before he is back on the defensive, holding his position just to keep this thing away from where Obi-Wan sits. He knows, somehow, deep in his bones, that he cannot allow it to reach him.

 _Then take it_ , the being howls, _and leave. You have no right to him. You have no right to be here. Go._

I won’t leave him, Cody snaps. I came to bring him home.

 _You may not have him!_ Another strike, and another, and Cody has to pivot, draw the being away to the side, try to angle it to move away from the man meditating at the edge of the drop. _You may not take him. You may stay, if you must, but not as you are. He cannot go._

Cody takes a blow to the arm, and grits his teeth on a scream, parries one-handed and presses forward into the being’s guard to throw a kick into its middle, force it back with a shout that rattles Cody’s teeth, inside his own mind.

I came for him, he says, and isn’t sure what of it is said and what is just screamed in his own mind, silent and too honest. I am taking him with me. I was made for him, he’s mine to protect.

The being slams him into the ground, and swings at Cody’s neck. He barely gets the General’s ‘saber up in time.

 _You have already failed at that once_ , it croons, low and cruel, and then Cody can hear his own voice, _Blast him,_ and the sound of cannon fire ringing in a canyon. _Your task is done. You failed._

Yes, Cody says, teeth gritted. I did. But it doesn’t matter. I won’t fail again.

He shoves upwards and slides down into the being’s guard, lets the ‘saber score the earth where his head was, and comes to his feet in the being’s not-a-face. With a shout that makes no sound, he slams his head into where the being’s nose should be, flips Obi-Wan’s ‘saber as the being staggers, and shoves it hard into the center of the mass he cannot look at.

The being explodes, and the world goes dark. In Cody’s head, something echoes like a laugh, loud and sharp, in a way that makes his pulse race, makes that bone-deep animal panic rise out through his skin in a cloud, choking him.

 _You are a feisty one,_ says the voice. It sounds… surprised, amused, which is not quite what Cody expected. _Tell me. How will you take him, as you are? Do you think he will follow the man who ordered his death, when he came to this place willingly?_

Cody _can’t breathe_. He can barely think. But this answer, he knows. Yes, he manages, teeth bared in a defiance he clings to with all he has. I do.

The being laughs again, and laughs, and laughs, and Cody knows with a sudden, screaming certainty that if this being wills it, he will drown.

And then Cody is back in the clearing, gasping on the ground, the General’s lightsaber in his fist.

 _Then we will make a deal, you and I,_ whispers the voice. _You will leave this place the way you came. You will walk through all your trials and return to where you began, and he will follow, or he will not. If he does, you will be restored to the lives you left behind._

 _But_ , says the being, the voice in Cody’s head curling like the edge of a knife blade along flesh, cutting into his thoughts so smoothly he hardly feels it, leaving words behind like scars, _if you turn, if you doubt, if you lose faith and check to see if your General is at your heels, you will lose, and he will be lost._

_Is it a bargain?_

Cody stares at the gravel under his hands.

I leave, he clarifies, and he can choose to follow, but I can’t turn around to see if he has. And if I don’t, and he decides to come, we both live. That right?

_Yes. Until your time runs out again, as time always does._

Cody nods, and gets to his feet. He turns, carefully, carefully, not looking back at Obi-Wan, towards the stone, and the path out.

“It’s a deal,” Cody says, words audible again, pressing into the silence like a brand, and with nothing else left to do begins to walk. He focuses on his steps crunching over the gravel in steady beats, like his breaths in his lungs, like the waves of the ocean he rode here in his mind.

He does not look back.


	5. Chapter 5

If the silence had been deafening on the way in, it was almost _unbearable_ on the way out.

The thing is--the thing _is_ , Cody can’t think of anything to say to fill the silence. It had been easier, somehow, to talk to nobody, when he was absolutely, 100% certain he was alone. “I wonder if you can hear me,” he muses, eventually. “I suspect it would defeat the purpose of the test.” If he were allowed to _talk_ to his General, he’d be able to do what he could to sway a decision to continue to follow, after all. Cody doubts that whatever being set this last task is inclined to give Cody an advantage like that. Certainly, Cody is still feeling the whole body burn of the trip here and the fight he’d just had at the end, in that strange clearing. Walking all the way back is not appealing.

“Honestly, you have no real reason to listen to me one way or the other,” he muses to himself, out loud, as he carefully steps around the swarms of beings walking the other way. “You shouldn’t trust me at all. I--” (‘ _Blast him,’ and the sound of cannon fire_ ) “--tried to kill you,” he finishes, and then closes his mouth. There’s something sharp in his eyes, suddenly. Burning. “I didn’t even hesitate.” ( _‘Yes, my Lord,’ and no hesitation in his mind--nothing left to object, or to mourn._ ) “I’m bringing you back now because Vader wasn’t finished with you, and he decided to use me to get what he wants.”

His throat closes, and he clears it, carefully. “He knew I wouldn’t turn down the chance,” he confesses, quietly. “He made sure it was _me_ making the decision, because he knew if I had my own mind that I’d get inventive, if it meant getting to you. And it wasn’t a risk, because he knew I wouldn’t say no. Not to the chance to get you back. This is… selfish.”

There’s absolutely no sound at all, other than his own voice, his own steps on the road. This is no different from the way here. It currently makes Cody want to scream.

“Maybe they should have let you hear me after all, if you’re even behind me,” he muses, rather than actually do it. “Apparently, what I would do with the opportunity is talk you _out_ of following, instead of begging you to come.”

Still no answer. Of course there isn’t. Cody sets his jaw, and goes back to marching. No stopping this time. The sooner he gets out of here, the sooner he will know whether any of this was worth it.

* * *

“You know, It’s not actually the lack of footsteps that’s so disconcerting,” he says, some indeterminable time later, as it occurs to him. “To be frank, sir, you walk too quietly anyway. I think you may have given most of the shinies anxiety sneaking up on them.” There’s no answer, obviously, and Cody closes his eyes, nods.

“That’s the bit that’s disconcerting,” he explains. “You walk too quietly, General, but it was a rare thing for you to not _answer_ if someone spoke to you first. That,” he smiles, wryly, “and I’m not allowed to turn around to check if you’re there. It’s--” He pauses, tries to put this into words. “I realize that you have not been just a head-turn away in any direction for nearly twenty years, but in some ways… that time feels like a dream to me. Or like… reading a briefing of something that happened to someone else. What I feel for it is… detached. Second-hand. But it happened to _me_ , so the result is more--like I was asleep, and then I woke up, and everyone and everything I loved was just…” he gestures. Just gone. “So, that’s the worst part. I can’t confirm for myself that you’re there.”

He walks for a bit more, listening to the silence. “I missed you,” he says, and it’s easy to say, because he doesn’t really know if Obi-Wan Kenobi can hear him. “As much as I could miss anything.”

The road stretches out. Cody keeps walking.

* * *

He crests a hill, and the three-headed clone creature is suddenly there, still facing out and away from Cody’s vantage point, tail curled around its back legs, massive body rising and falling as the thing breathes.

Before Cody, the pile of his discarded stormtrooper armor lays on the ground.

“If you’re still there, General--” He pauses, frowns, corrects himself. “If you were ever there at all,” he mutters, and continues before he thinks better of this. “We are about to reach our first obstacle,” he reports. “In my experience on the way in, these obstacles appeared to be geared to affect me specifically. The creature I can see right now appears to be some sort of large lothwolf with three brothers for heads.” He pauses. “From what I could determine, their control chips are active, and they are currently following guard protocol. I… suspect that they are meant to guard from beings coming out as much as unauthorized beings walking in. I believe our best chance is to remain undetected for as long as possible, and then to--” his mouth twists “--run like hell, to be honest.”

He sighs, and then bends down, picks up the pile of armor. “Once we pass this obstacle, we are going to reach a river, and we will have to pay a ferryman to get across. I used my armor on the way in; I suspect I’ll have to do the same on the way out. I doubt I could get this back on if I wanted to, so a corollary to the ‘run like hell’ plan is that I will be lugging a full set of stormtrooper armor with me as I do it.” He grimaces, straps as much of the armor as he can to his belt so he has to carry a bit less of the broken, dirty plasteel in his arms.

“I would ask for your input,” he says, to nothing and nobody at all, “but I don’t even know if I’m wasting my breath reading you in.” He stands there for a moment, letting himself feel the weight of the armor, the breaths entering and exiting his lungs, the elevated heart rate that has begun to pound in his ears and behind his eyes. “I don’t know if you can die a second time,” he murmurs, quietly. “I--feel obligated to remind you, sir, that you have no real reason to follow me into this. I don’t know what would have happened if you’d stayed where you were, but it looked… peaceful, at least.” He shuts his eyes, and then opens them again. “Alright,” he says, to the silent air. “I’m moving out.” He puts one foot down, and then another, and then again.

Here, the shades are a little thicker, as they part around the creature like water around a stone. Cody keeps to the edges of the road to let himself be a second point of divergence, keeps his breaths and steps as slow and quiet as he can. They’re still loud, of course--the only sound in a silent world, the plasteel clinking against itself softly as he moves. There’s nothing to do about it, so he keeps his pace even and calm, carefully eyeing the closest of the clones as he passes the shoulder joint of the creature and moves out of his blind spot. The clone doesn’t move--doesn’t even look like he’s breathing, though Cody supposes the creature itself is doing that for all three heads.

Ten paces out, and then twenty. No movement from the guards. Twenty-five paces. Thirty. Forty-five, and he’s begun to walk up the rise, leaving the creature behind in the valley--

" _Good soldiers follow orders_ ,” say three voices--flat and mechanical. Cody is running even as the blaster fire begins--not aimed at him.

He dashes up and over the rise, lightsaber burning where it smacks against his blacks and lungs on fire, and the blasterfire follows him on and on and _on_ \--too long, a real blaster would have run out of charge--and then he’s over the rise and out of their line of sight but he can still hear it as though the bolts are hitting just behind him, but he can’t turn to see, has no way of knowing on this silent path if they’re being chased, if _he_ is being chased and if he’s left his General to die _again_ \--

He runs until he physically cannot, and then he lets himself stumble, falls to his knees gasping for breath, fingers digging into the plasteel in his arms as he roughly takes in air.

When he stops, the sound of blasters stops with him.

He gives himself a moment, forces his breathing back to even, takes stock of himself and the world around him. Nothing, of course, makes any sound behind him. “Still with me, sir?” he asks, and waits, as though he’s expecting someone to say something. The silence looms, aching and empty, and he lets himself imagine for a moment that he can hear a breeze, or maybe cruel laughter.

He shakes his head at himself, and then slowly, carefully, levers himself to his feet. “You survived a cannon blast off a cliff face into rocky waters,” he speaks into the world. “And that’s possibly the _least_ dangerous fatal situation I’ve seen you walk away from.”

He needs to believe that, he knows. He needs to believe that if his General was following him at all, he made it through.

“Not too much further now,” he lies, because General Kenobi is currently incapable of speaking it into the world himself, as he usually would, and continues on. “Almost there.”

* * *

“Not often I’m asked to take a body back the other way,” Jango muses, when Cody finally reaches the riverbank. “How’d it go?”

“I suppose I’ll find out when I’m allowed to turn around,” Cody replies, and tries to keep the wry exhaustion out of his voice. “Another set of armor for passage across.”

Jango snorts. “Looks more like plasteel scrap than armor,” he opines, but makes room for Cody to dump his armful onto the ferry, start removing and stacking things from his belt. “Hurry up, I don’t have all day.”

“Does time even pass here?” Cody asks, giving Jango his best unimpressed look as he stacks grieves on top of the pile.

“Everything’s relative,” Jango says, and shrugs. Cody snorts, reaches down to take off his boots--

\--And pauses. “Let me get on and take the rest of the gear off on the ferry before you go.”

Jango blinks. “...Why,” he asks, voice very flat.

 _Because I need to buy time for a ghost to get on behind me_. “I don’t want to get my feet wet,” he shoots back, and lets his face dare comment the way he learned during twenty-two years of command.

Jango gives him the same damn look back, unimpressed, and then rolls his eyes expansively. Cody is reminded all at once, viscerally, of Wolffe, and there’s suddenly a lump in his throat, uncomfortable. He swallows, and purposely tucks it away for later. “Fine,” Jango says. “Get on.”

Cody gets on, keeps his back very carefully to the edge of the ferry where he’d boarded, and finishes taking off his boots. He takes the belt off last, shifting to hold the _jetiikad_ in his hand for lack of anywhere to clip it.

At no point does the ferry dip to indicate someone had climbed on behind him. Cody refuses to examine that observation any further.

“Finished?” Jango asks, voice bored.

“...Yes,” Cody says, and still, _still_ doesn’t turn around.

* * *

Hours or maybe days later, Cody has to admit he has no idea where he was when he started this journey, or what he will do when he gets there.

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to check the lightsaber,” he admits, coming to a halt and reaching up to run a hand over his face. His bare feet ache. “On the one hand, it’s how I found you to begin with, so if I look and see that you’re right behind me--or not behind me--it seems like I’ve lost the spirit of the test. But it’s how I got in, and I have no other ideas on how to get out of here.” Unsurprisingly, there are no suggestions forthcoming from any other potential parties on this road.

Cody sighs, and rolls the lightsaber between his palms. “I suppose you didn’t meditate every time you wanted to do something with this,” he muses. “Theoretically, if I have a connection to it, I should just be able to use it, regardless of whether I am actively in a mindscape. Seemed to work during that fight, at least. And--” he says warming to the topic, “to be frank, my money’s on none of this place being _real_ \--or, not an actual place. Enough of what I’ve seen was targeted to me specifically that it’s a fair bet this is all in my head somehow, or at least its my head that something’s using to make a world I can interact with. So… maybe I can just… take the ‘saber, cut a hole, and leave.”

The world is silent. Cody’s eyes burn. “I wish I knew if you were there,” he confesses, even as he still, once again, _does not turn around_.

He stands for a moment, staring at his hands, and then ignites the lightsaber, lets the light of the plasma blade cast eerie shadows across the road, and thinks of three years of one man, and his warm laugh and sad eyes and heart of stars, of green tea and crisp sea salt after a storm.

“This test is absurd, by the way,” Cody tells his General. “It’s a test of trust, and faith, and those are both things I’ve never needed to question. I’d follow you anywhere.”

He has no reason to believe, he knows, with bone-deep certainty, that he is anything but utterly, breathtakingly alone here, on this silent road, but.

The thing is--

The _thing is_ \--

“The thing is, General,” Cody says, out loud, lightsaber warm and pulsing in his hands. “I really do believe you’re there.” He closes his eyes, raises the lightsaber, and brings it down on the air in front of him, reaching out with that part of him like a closed circuit that lives in the back of his soul, and _shoves_ his way through the hole he has created in nothing, pushes and pushes and something _tears_ \--

* * *

Cody’s first thought, when he comes back to himself, is nearly swallowed in screaming pain, and it’s the same as the last first thought he had.

 _Am I dead?_ he thinks, and curls in on himself, pressing his forehead to the cool durasteel and gasping back nausea, once again.

His second thought, without even bothering to resolve the first, is _did he come?_

He can’t hear anything over the pounding of his own pulse in his head, the ragged breaths that are dragged out of him in gasps. In his hand, the activated lightsaber pulses--that and his lack of bucket the only things different enough from his first moments as himself to stop him wondering, wildly, if he’d hallucinated _everything_ from that first moment on. He tries, desperately, to quiet his body, strains his ears to try to hear another person, another set of breaths, any movement at all--

\--He hears nothing, just the whir of the command hub, the creak of the battlestation and the pound of running feet outside the room and the sharp, insistent wailing of some alarm, and suddenly, violently, it occurs to him that he has failed.

“Cody?” says a voice he’d know in death, and did.

Cody whirls, hand tightening convulsively around the lightsaber hilt, and there, in a heap on his own damn wrinkled cloak, is Cody’s General--hair warm red again, the way it is in Cody’s memories, shining in the Utapau sun; eyes that same deep, brilliant blue they’ve always been.

Cody turns off the lightsaber. “General,” he says, voice choked, and then between one breath and the next they have both moved, and Cody’s arms have wrapped around his General’s shoulders, hands pressed flat to his back where Cody can feel his heartbeat, the breaths in and out of his lungs. Obi-Wan is warm, and solid, and here, he’s _here_ , he’s _alive_ \--

Obi-Wan Kenobi smells of green tea and the crisp, clean salt scent that always reminds Cody of Kamino’s sea after a storm. His fingers are locked around the backplate of the armor Cody’s wearing, holding on like he thinks Cody, of the two of them, might be the one to disappear. He presses his forehead to Cody’s, warm skin against warm skin, breaths mingling with Cody’s own. Cody thinks he might be crying. Obi-Wan definitely is.

“I could hear you,” his General says, low and serious and _earnest_ even as his voice shakes, like it’s desperately important that Cody believe him. “As we walked back. I would follow you just as readily as you would follow me, Cody, you must know--”

“I know,” Cody says, and smiles--

And then there’s a _boom_ , and the entire battlestation shakes, and they’re thrown sideways into the wall.

Cody’s on his feet in the next moment, mind snapping back into the present even as he is _utterly furious_ at the interruption, General Kenobi right behind him, and a few things become apparent very quickly.

First, the battlestation is under attack.

Alarms are _blaring_ , which Cody had noted but not processed. They’re loud enough to drown out most everything else going on outside the command hub; to be honest, they might have had something to do with why Cody didn’t immediately hear someone else in the room with him when he’d first come to. The running feet are troops dashing past the door to battle stations, presumably to address the attack, and the command hub’s screens are flashing to indicate damage to the Death Star’s hull.

Second, Cody feels better than he has in a long time.

Looking at his reflection in the durasteel shows him a face _years_ younger than the one he’d had before this started. Nineteen years, possibly, he thinks, glancing at his inexplicably 37-year-old General. A mystery, for sure, but one that perhaps can be addressed at a better time.

Finally, Darth Vader is no longer in the room.

Instead, there is one single, solitary screen not screaming its alarm across the command hub, with a map of the entire battlestation and a red path highlighted. It looks, Cody realizes, between one moment and the next, to be leading a body from this room to an escape pod.

“Anakin?” Obi-Wan asks, dark and tired and, painfully, almost hopeful. Cody nods.

“It’s almost certainly a trap,” he points out, voice very wry.

“Oh, most definitely,” General Kenobi says, and when Cody turns to look at him, he gives that cocky smirk he wears when he’s about to do something crazy and reckless and win anyway. “Shall we, then, Commander?”

The battlestation shakes again, and Cody finds himself smirking back, leans down for a moment to pick up his bucket, shove it onto his head for the anonymity it provides. If they’re going to escape the _Death Star_ , they’ll need all the advantages they can get. He scoops his blaster up next, laying where it was discarded in the scuffle with Vader, and holds the lightsaber out to Obi-Wan.

“After you, sir,” he says, and his General wraps his long fingers around the weapon, and his smirk goes a little soft, a little fond, a little more dangerous.

“Yes,” he says. “I suppose it is my turn to lead the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap! Thank you all so much for your engagement with this story; it's been so fun to watch you all enjoy the sheer amount of nerdy thought I put into this thing. :D I hope the last chapter answers some of the questions the rest of the fic posed. To be clear: there was never any chance Cody was going to turn around.
> 
> Before I forget again, the title is from [_Variation on the Word Sleep_](https://poets.org/poem/variation-word-sleep) by Margaret Atwood.

**Author's Note:**

> Come shout with me about clones at [adiduck](https://adiduck.tumblr.com)


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